March 6, 2011

The supervisor, noting that Meade is recording, tells the worker to "stand quiet" and tells Meade he may photograph all he wants. At 0:28, we see the razor blade scraper in the worker's hand, and hear the supervisor say "Don't use that on the marble."

At 0:58, the supervisor pushes Meade. At 2:20, the supervisor expresses the theory that Meade "want[s] a confrontation" then admits that he put his hands on Meade, which might have been "a sin." Meade says, "I'm not talking about a sin. I'm talking about a tort." The supervisor tells Meade to "go away."

At 3:00, we see the use of fingernails to scrape off the stickers that have been moistened with something from a spray bottle that is referred to as "fresh water" (at 5:06) but produces foam. [Instapundit calls this scandal in a squirtbottle "Watergate."]

At 4:00: A middle-aged woman says to the supervisor: "They're filming that really well and that's what everybody in America thinks this is about — how much work it is to clean up after us." With narrowed eyes, she looks at Meade and nods a few times. We then see another woman who is photographing Meade. He asks her if she's a protester, and she says, "I'm a citizen," and Meade says, "So am I," an answer she seems to find quite unsatisfying.

At 5:28, there's some camaraderie between Meade and the worker who's doing the cleaning, and we learn some details about the difficulty of removing different kinds of tape from the "polished marble." "Scotch Tape is the worst."

8:46: Meade asks, "So, is it just water?" and the supervisor intervenes. Meade inquires whether they are doing anything that they think they should hide. Supervisor: "This is something that he does every day." Worker: "Only not in such great multitude."

9:34: Meade asks, "When did they catch on to the idea that they should use blue painter's tape?" Worker: "I'm not sure." Supervisor: "Just don't give him any comments... probably not the press, because he's no credentials, but just another one of the bloggers."

In all fairness to the staffers, these days I think it's quite wise for none of them to give statements to, or talk to, anybody recording anything. They're there to do their job, not to make public statements which, because they're not trained in doing so, can easily be taken the wrong way by somebody. Plus, if they spent all their time answering questions, they wouldn't have time to get their work done.

I agree with Phil. The supervisor has to be down there because this remains a tense situation, fraught with potential turmoil. It's the supervisor's ass if one of his employees says something foolish, or gets busted wasting time on the $7.5 million cleaning job. There's all sorts of media and bloggers and protesters still around, so sure, the supervisor ought to be down on the floor, where things are happening, rather than closeted in his office shuffling papers.

"probably not the press, because he's no credentials, but just another one of the bloggers."

Providing better information than the alleged journalists at The Wisconsin State Journal/Capital Times/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, et. al.

When you see the disparity between what is shown in this cinema verite, and the way it is digested and processed by supposed professional "journalists" what would proper "credentials" be, anyway?

It's like that great Three Stooges routine "Press, Press, Pull" (from the short "Three Little Beers" November, 1935) where Larry, Moe and Curly are trying to get into some event they are being kept out of, and they come up with the brilliant idea of pulling the buttons off a vending machine, two of which say "press", the third, of course Curly's, says "pull". Evidently back in the day (the 20's/30's?) you would have a button identifying you as "Press". So, that was the joke, see,

The apparent leftie urge to place political stickers on various objects is something I have a difficult time understanding. They share stenciled anti-corporate messages on sidewalks, flyers... The same people have great disdain for commercial advertising.

Man Meade is a big asshole. The peoplethere are just doing their jobs cleaning and Larry is threatening to sue them! BTW, maybe I will be attending one of Alhouse's lectures this week with my Flip camera and disrupt her while she is trying to do her job.

There might be an audience for a documentary about the protest sleep-in under the capitol dome! Meade and the professor might rake in scads of coins. The documentary itself would be fascinating, especially with before and after scenes.

Considering that the professor is paid with public funds, I would encourage everyone within driving distance of Madison to record her at work, feeling free to question her methodology. ("But why not just lecture?")

"BTW, maybe I will be attending one of Alhouse's lectures this week with my Flip camera and disrupt her while she is trying to do her job."

I know you mental defective types have difficulty with the concept but there's a difference between public space and non-public space.

When did you change your name to "Chad", phil? And, strangely enough, "Mike" who posted a strangely similar kind of comment above used to be named "Bob". A lot of identity manipulation going on. I wonder why?

I'm conflicted. Meade is doing great work and we are lucky to have him there day after day doing it. We owe him a great debt of thinks. But every time he opens his mouth, it's like he's begging somebody to clock him.

Larry Meade is just over compensating because he does not actually have a job and is having to mooch off of Althouse who is ripping off the WI taxpayers to the tune of $160,000.00 a year due to her tenure abuse. Larry, grow a pair and get a job!

Again it seems like the "officials" are in collusion with the protesters. I guess the supervisors were trying to clean up all the damage without the public knowing about it. So much for the millions the taxpayers paid in the '90s to restore the building to its glory.

"I would encourage everyone within driving distance of Madison to record her at work, feeling free to question her methodology."

Thanks for reminding me to keep the university police number programmed in my cell phone. My class, unlike the Capitol, isn't open to the general public, and if anyone tried to record my performance on video, I would simply stop and call security.

How about I go around Madison and place Republican propaganda (using painter's tape of course...) on every Prius, Subaru, and Smart car, and all over the TAA and WEA headquarters?

Or how about I smear dogsh*t all over LaFollete's statue?

Regardless of how hard or easy this stuff is or isn't to remove, the fact of the matter is that I would like to think that the all knowing and all so intellectual liberals would have at least some respect for their own buildings.

The people in the city are just making bigger a**es of themselves by the day. You trash the capitol, cost the taxpayer excessive amounts of money via the mafioso unions, and then expect the majority in this state to feel sorry for your situation.

Meade was documenting an important public even with important significance to a current political issue: the damage to the Capitol and the difficulty in remedying it.

There is a proposal to spend millions on the cleanup, and it matters what's really going on. This is unquestionably news and not just prying into some poor worker trying to do his job. The worker, by the way, comes off very well in this video.

If you care about the guys shown here, think about the way they felt seeing the building getting worse and worse over a period of more than 2 weeks.

The sad thing is Wisconsin-ites seem so inured to reality that they will forgive the left anything. I think at least that state has reached passed that tipping point where most of the people are somehow attached to the public teat. They will never voluntarily agree to anything that reduces their dependence.

Sad thing to me is how the conversation on both sides of the whole issue, not just this article, has completely veered away from what's at the heart issue. Both sides are so defensive at this point, that the education of our children is no longer the topic. There are now long term statistics in place that show areas we CAN greatly improve in. Hope the conversation gets back on track in the media.

Yes Ann, your pussy husband can agressively get in the faces of people whose job it is to clean. They are just janitors afterall. But how dare anybody suggest the same treatment of you in your protected Ivory Tower!

If the press want to tell a story, they will use your quote to tell the story they want to tell and not necessarily the story you want to tell. It is very easy to take a few words out of context and make a fool out of anyone. The supervisor was wise to be wary and suspicious of Meade. He did not wish to be part of a stinging expose of improper cleaning techniques in the capitol....It gets a little meta-- Meade taking pictures of a man cleaning marble while a woman takes pictures of him taking pictures, and everyone gets testy about ther whole deal. I would tell everybody to get a life, but I just watched the whole encounter and thus exist at an even more rarefied level of ennui.

The fact of the matter is that the unions' actions have spoken a lot louder than their worlds. They have absolutely no shame in costing the taxpayer left and right.

They say they don't care about money, yet why is it that local branches of the teachers' union are trying to ram contracts through before the bill passes, preserving the ridiculously low personal contributions they promised to compromise on?

"Jesus, why does this blog attract so many boring-ass one-note trolls. Keep up the struggle, Shawn... I mean, "Clairvius Narcisse"."

Palladian, do you think it's a pertinent question: by what means did Meade get the ticket? If not, why?

I'm trying to piece this out...a public official gives a new media member a ticket to an important speech. Was it just a question of asking for it? Is it incumbent on the new media member to be forthcoming about the details? If, say, David Corn was in town blogging event, and he was asked how he got a ticket, would he be expected to be forthcoming?

Spring can't spring fast enough, as it never does for us in the upper tier.

Important is to remember why we went to the woods-

Newly elected governor wanted to reign in gastapo unions,fleebaggers took flight, marble became marbled, Althouse went viral, police "un-did" Kent State, Newmeadia rose too fast and must be crushed, and return to normal tastes like Team Spirit.

Ann Althouse said ... Meade was documenting an important public even with important significance to a current political issue: the damage to the Capitol and the difficulty in remedying it.

There is a proposal to spend millions on the cleanup, and it matters what's really going on. This is unquestionably news and not just prying into some poor worker trying to do his job. The worker, by the way, comes off very well in this video.

If you care about the guys shown here, think about the way they felt seeing the building getting worse and worse over a period of more than 2 weeks.

--------

Breathlessly boring video deserves a breathless defense, and you certainly put your lungs, if not your brain, into this one.

I will toss and turn in my crib tonight thinking how those janitors must have felt about tape residue on their marble walls. Oh, the humanity!

Yes Ann, your pussy husband can agressively get in the faces of people whose job it is to clean. They are just janitors afterall. But how dare anybody suggest the same treatment of you in your protected Ivory Tower!

So much for the idea that the clean-up was going to be some sort of scientific restoration work.

That's pretty much what I thought. I'd bet he's using Formula 409, which for those that do not know, will dissolve tape residue. I'm surprised he's using a razor blade though, it isn't necessary. Just soak it thoroughly with 409 and wait a few minutes, then a plastic putty knife will do to scrape it off. Finish up with another liberal spray of 409 and wipe with a clean wet lint free cloth to remove any remaining residue, then polish it dry.

You can use that to get bumper stickers off your car or Velcro tape residue off your dash if you use that for a radar detector or something like that. If it's really stubborn the application of a hair dryer will solve the problem.

If the Tea Party had placed stickers and tape on the Capitol marble, the douche supervisor would have been filmed with tears running down his face at the atrocity. And it would have run on a loop on the Lame Stream Media for ever. Meade objects to a public worker trying to impede a legal act by putting hands on him and the leftys here act as if Meade was baiting the supervisor. We all see what we want to see but this seems cut and dried

On many surfaces, Scotch tape comes off very cleanly. But when it leaves residue, it can be very tough to get off. Certain brands of duct tape also leaves a nasty residue, but usually only after it's been on for a few months or years.

I worked as a church custodian for a few years. I suppose I should be grateful that no one recorded me any of the times I encountered tape on the floor -- tape that had been waxed over by my predecessor.

I will toss and turn in my crib tonight thinking how those janitors must have felt about tape residue on their marble walls. Oh, the humanity!

Peano brings the snark!

And yet, if this had been about a grand master painting being defaced, I doubt there would be as much snark.

That's a point the vast majority seem to be missing. By all accounts, the Wisconsin Capitol is a thing of pure beauty. I was raised to respect and revere such things, and not treat them with contempt. The neglect shown here by the union thugs is a neglect of their artistic and architectural heritage.

Certain buildings transcend the concept of being mere structures, and find their place in our history. I am fortunate to be near a number of amazing buildings that I hold dear; Monticello, the Grounds of the University of Virginia and the Virginia State Capitol. All designed by Thomas Jefferson. I could no more imagine defacing those structures in the name of modern political argument than I could imagine pissing on my father's grave.

The people who share in the upkeep of these buildings understand their importance, their significance and their part in preserving our heritage. They certainly have a greater respect for the meaning of that marble than Peano has. Why shouldn't they have feelings about the work they do, and why does Peano hold that work to be insignificant.

Think of all the architectural beauty you know of, and think of how you would feel seeing it defaced. I feel rage at the neanderthal thugs that treat their heritage like garbage.

Buildings like the Wisconsin Capitol are art, and as such deserve a great deal of respect. What Meade is doing is chronicling the shameful disrespect shown by union thugs in Madison. He deserves, in turn, admiration and respect.

"Both sides are so defensive at this point, that the education of our children is no longer the topic."

I won't be rude over this, but I can't see that it was ever the topic. Not ever.

The fact of it is that it's always easier to add government obligations and nearly impossible to push them *back*. Walker and the Republicans who won the majority last election ran on the promise to push government obligations back. The topic was never the children, it was the *budget*. It was pushing government back as promised.

It got to be about unions because the unions were an obstacle to reducing government. That wasn't about the children either.

Nor are unions themselves about children, AT ALL. The job of the union isn't anything to do with ensuring good education as if other people can't be trusted to care. The union is supposed to be there to negotiate contracts and maybe provide mediation and legal representation FOR TEACHERS. Not students. Not the children.

What this has been about, has been all about, from the very beginning is the budget of the state of Wisconsin during a time when everyone else is having to cut back and tighten belts, and a union organization that sees it's own power threatened. Powerful and wealthy unions vs. taxpayers; not at all workers vs. fat cats.

And the *unions* would rather keep their power intact and their revenue collection intact even if it means people lose their jobs. At least the union itself doesn't lose or have to cut back. And since the state is going to be blamed for the lost jobs it's all win-win.

New media is a reminder to those that suck off the public teat that they work for us. That thought hasn't occurred to them for a long time, if ever. That's why the supervisor was so combative. the Venerable Meade did nothing but shoot video. This should have been a one minute, "See How Hard It Is," on the clean up of the marble. The super and the pompous snotty ladies made it otherwise.

retire05 Recognizing that you have been out of it for a while you should note that the subject workers are employees of the State and are not tea party people. The latter are cleaning up the trash outside the capitol, the former laboring on behalf and at the expense of the taxpaying public. But thanks for trying.

fen,i find your assumption that i am a "libtard" enlightening and enjoy your insightful posts. they are free of "stupid bullshit" and prove you are able to claim the high moral ground and have an astuteness that we mere mortals can only dream of.the chaos symbol was intended for readers such as yourself. it is easily spotted and easily skipped (i have no idea who elric of melnibone is). feel free to exercise that freedom when you see my posts in the future.

I met only two people there this afternoon who I could possibly identify as Tea Party. One of the two, as it turned out, I misidentified - he is a Wisconsin public service employee - and the other refused to say whether he was or wasn't Tea Party.

So where were the Tea Party Take Out the Trashers? My theory now is that perhaps there were in fact tens of thousands of Tea Party people there today and they were all dressed in costume as Indians, hippies, teamsters, Chicagoans, communists, and Democrats.

Ann is editing this afternoon's raw video which includes a short clip of my encounter with the possible Tea Party dude who was picking up trash and didn't want to talk to me.

dearest dust bunny queen,thank you for taking time to give your input. my question was actually intended for meade and since it appeared directly below his post i assumed that would have been evident. i apologize for any confusion this may have caused. if in the future i have any questions about recipes i will address you directly. btw, i really prefer stone ground meal when making corn bread.

As one who identifies himself with the tea party movement, I will speak for all tea party dudes.

This tea party dude, who spoke for all tea party dudes at the time he didn't speak with Meade is not a professional...just a dude.

Picking up where dude left off, I too am just a dude, speaking for all tea party dudes, who are inclined not become part of the media, especially NewMeadia, but just want to be counted as one who does not subscribe to the ever boisterous leftist crowd.

We object to leftism, and sentence shortening via periods, and are the shy and amateur type, unaccustomed to MSM strategic plundering that one may find in the Holy Reverend Jackson, or Son of Democracy Michelle Moore.

We wish to desecrate your marble in peace...while we worship small German dudes with funny mustaches.

Taping signs to the walls is so high school. All that paper, time and cleanup for what? How did all that effort move the ball even one millimeter? The primary effect was to cost us money and virtually nothing else came of it. That is so much a liberal M.O.

"For God's sake, Ann, give the poor man a day off so he can recuperate."

He's all jazzed up about it. He was out the door this morning before I got up. He filled up the cameras, came home and gave them to me to upload and edit, then went back down again. I haven't been outside since Friday, but I have been at the computer editing his video nearly the whole time.

"So... that guy just stands there all day and supervises the other guy cleaning stickers off marble?"

This is precisely why it is estimated to cost $7.5 million to have some schmuck run a razor blade and water over the marble peeling off the stickers put there by a bunch of fucking ignorant Democrat party government officials.

As a country, we have too many goddamned over-paid and over-important Democrats standing around "supervising" the "restoration" and pushing citizens around, trying to create confrontation.

Ann, the fact that the janitor is working in a public space and you work in a private space certainly has legal significance, but I don't know that it makes much of a distinction in any other aspect of the situation.

As the professor in charge of the class, you have the legal right to decide whether someone can or cannot video you while you are working. By your answer, you don't want to be video-taped while working on the taxpayer's dime, and so you would exercise your authority to call the police and have the videographer removed.

Perhaps the janitor, or his supervisor, feels the same way you do, and would prefer not to be video-taped while working on the taxpayer's dime. The only difference between them and you is that they are required to work in a public building, and so do not have the authority to call the police to have the videographer removed.

But that's the only difference, the legal one. The legal difference is important, of course, but tells us nothing about whether the act of getting that close to someone who is merely going about their job is an asshole thing to do or not, and it doesn't seem terribly sporting to retreat to the "it's legal" line, when the question raised is the assholishness (or not) of the behavior in question.

Marble is a porous carbonate stone that stains easily. Adhesives will soak into it and can be really hard to remove. You can't use petroleum solvents or oils, they penetrate and stain. You can't use even weak acids like vinegar -- it's a carbonate, acid reacts strongly with it.

Yes, you can do nasty things to marble with tape, depending on what kind of stickum it has and how long it's in contact. Most of the damage won't show up for quite a while, though, through slow-motion chemical reaction. In the meantime a very mild soap solution or just plain water ASAP is the "first response" of choice and will take care of most of the problem. But whatever it doesn't take care of will be very expensive to fix down the line. And trying to do it wrong will make it much worse.

Meade should have told the Building Maintenance guy to get some Goof-Off. But he might have misunderstood that. Goof-Off works well removing glue and even dried latex paint. Add it to your duck-tape as a handy man's best friend.

"Meade should have told the Building Maintenance guy to get some Goof-Off. But he might have misunderstood that. Goof-Off works well removing glue and even dried latex paint. Add it to your duck-tape as a handy man's best friend."

Recognizing that you have been out of it for a while (I don't know what you mean by "out of it", please explain) you should note that the subject workers are employees of the State and are not tea party people. The latter are cleaning up the trash outside the capitol, the former laboring on behalf and at the expense of the taxpaying public. But thanks for trying."

Now, Richard, I am usually a kind and generous person. But you seem to have a reading comprehension problem. I was referring (now read this very slowly) to Ann's earlier comments about TEA Partiers showing up with "scrub brushes". I fully understand the people working on the marble are STATE employees. But then, that poses another question:

if those state workers are so unhappy with Governor Walker, why are they trying to help clean up the mess created by other union members who had no respect for the State Capitol? Ummmm?

It was union members, SPOILED union members, and their sympathizers, that cause the problem to the Capitol in the first place. They should all have the cost of restoration taken out of their paychecks until the state has recouped that cost.

You yankees really need to get a clue. You have a right to peaceful assembly. You do NOT have the right to destroy property.

Jay Retread said...Yes Ann, your pussy husband can agressively get in the faces of people whose job it is to clean. They are just janitors afterall. But how dare anybody suggest the same treatment of you in your protected Ivory Tower!

It's interesting to watch the lefties immediately go to obscenity and sexual innuendo when confronted on almost any issue. They can't be that stupid as anyone knows better.

I think it has to do with their psychology, I believe. Most of them are inadequate males with a deep sense a inadequacy. What really gets them is to see an alpha male come along and pick up the girl they have been watching and dreaming about. That is a real jab in the underdeveloped part of their ego.

Here is Ann, a pretty good looking chick and Meade comes along and POW ! In the meantime, Jay Retread's subscription to the internet porno service has expired and he has to wait for his next welfare check to renew.

Palladian wrote:I know you mental defective types have difficulty with the concept but there's a difference between public space and non-public space.

yet, you can be a disruptive jerk in both. And notice how the people at the capitol who are cleaning the mess are as annoyed by Meade as they are by the protesters.Disruption is disruption whether you are an annoying protester, or whether you are getting into peoples faces about doors they can or can't enter or bugging people while they're trying to clean up after the slobs.

I am personally glad that a lot of folks around here are becoming educated in the area of tape and its reactions to various surfaces. I'm sure the protesters with their homemade signs and tape hate democracy and their government so much that they studies which tapes would be most harmful to the various surfaces utilized in the Wisconsin Capitol. In fact, it is obvious that the police were working with the protesters and probably advising them on the most harmful tapes to use since they did not order the protesters to stop taping their annoying and aesthetically displeasing signs the first time one of them had the gall to tape one up. PROVE ME WRONG! I'm actually a little surprised given the fact that the Madison cops are clearly communistic that they did not supply the protesters with several gross of duct tape and sharpies.

I'm having a little trouble even understanding where Althouse and Meade are coming from. They seem mad at the protesters for assuming that the Capitol building was an open place and mad at the cops for restricting access and working with the protesters.If the cops are cooperating at all with the protesters it's simply so that the don't even further disrupt the capitol building who do have a right to go the capitol building I wish they were even more forceful with the protesters and cracked down once they saw them put up the sings, or make the protesters clean the signs up themselves, BUT I'm not faulting the cops, the Capitol building in this mess.

"Meade should have told the Building Maintenance guy to get some Goof-Off. But he might have misunderstood that. Goof-Off works well removing glue and even dried latex paint. Add it to your duck-tape as a handy man's best friend."

Absolutely not. Goof-Off, while good for a lot of things is NOT good for marble. I believe Goof-Off is a mixture of xylene and toluene and other strong, nasty solvents and thus should not be applied to marble, especially old, historically-important marble in a National Historic Landmark building.

"WD-40 also is good at removing spooge from surfaces."

WD-40 is basically mineral oil in Stoddard solvent, which is white spirit/mineral spirits. Again, a terrible substance to apply to marble and to a lot of other things as well, as it is tenacious and eventually oxidizes into a hard-to-remove gum.

"I am personally glad that a lot of folks around here are becoming educated in the area of tape and its reactions to various surfaces."

I studied art restoration for a while, and removing contact adhesives is a common task for conservators. Others who post here are chemists of various sorts, so there is informed commentary going on here. Actually my favorite comments here usually come from the experience of specialists in various subjects, be it law or chemistry or engineering or programming. I know it's easy to miss them amid the boring party-politics bluster, but they're here if you look.

"In fact, it is obvious that the police were working with the protesters and probably advising them on the most harmful tapes to use since they did not order the protesters to stop taping their annoying and aesthetically displeasing signs the first time one of them had the gall to tape one up."

So the local police are experts in stone conservation? I can tell you with authority that there is no pressure-based adhesive tape or sticker that is archival and that does not leave residue behind. In other words, there is no "less harmful" kind of tape when you're talking about applying it to porous, delicate surfaces. The police are not in any position to give such advice, and it is quite clear that the protesters could have done almost anything to the Capitol building and the police wouldn't have intervened, because the police generally favored the pro-public-union protesters. They failed in their duties as neutral public servants and protectors of a National Historic Landmark because it suited them politically.

This, I believe, is the most sobering lessons of the Wisconsin protests, and a perfect example why, as Franklin Roosevelt contended, public employee unions are dangerous to the rule of law.

Somebody who knew they were hanging signs should have said: "Hey protesters, you can't hang anything in here; or, alternatively, you can hang your shitty and aesthetically displeasing signs up, but use the blue painters tape." Note: the Koch Brothers patented blue painters tape. They are fucking geniuses.

What? I don't think even Meade says that. I think he says, "You put your hands on me." The video evidence is that Meade was basically almost doggystyling the worker and the other dude asked him to back up a little. BFD.

Palladian wrote:The police are not in any position to give such advice, and it is quite clear that the protesters could have done almost anything to the Capitol building and the police wouldn't have intervened, because the police generally favored the pro-public-union protesters. They failed in their duties as neutral public servants and protectors of a National Historic Landmark because it suited them politically.

Not so. They couldn't access certain doors. And they couldn't stay overnight. The protesters took the capitol to court for not providing enough access. Yet you were arguing with ME that I was being a dick for teling Althouse that her faux outrage about not getting into a door was not a real issue. And then you said that I liked standing in lines and having the police state force people to stand in lines. Yet, you also want to the police to be cracking down on the protesters and not allow them to put up signs. Isn't restricting access to doors preventing protesters from doing whatever they want? Yet that was me being a facist. Well you can't have it both ways. If you are going to fault the capitol for restricting access, then don't complain that they don't do enough to prevent protesters from staying all night or putting up signs. Because you and Althouse are protesting the very mechanism whereby an authority WOULD prevent protesters from doing whatever they wanted and saying that that restriction is somehow a violation of your fundamental rights.If they couldn't block a single door, and if making a protesters stand in a line is too much of an infringment on your liberties, then don't tell me that you think the cops can actually crack down on protesters or aren't sufficiently doing their jobs.

Still, there is something to the concept of "can't cheat an honest man". Being decent and responsible helps to avoid any number of pitfalls and mistakes. In this case, being extra careful of property that doesn't belong to you would have done the trick nicely, even if no one had the first clue that tape was bad for marble.

"Actually my favorite comments here usually come from the experience of specialists in various subjects, be it law or chemistry or engineering or programming. I know it's easy to miss them amid the boring party-politics bluster, but they're here if you look."

After Ann’s hysterical reaction to the thought of Tea partiers coming in to do a little clean-up, I had images of a museum restoration crew coming in and carefully buffing the ancient marble of the capital. Instead we see video of the cleaning crew with razor blades some fairly aggressive chemical cleaners that penetrate tape and dissolve glue, something that water by itself will not do. I would expect that the marble, being somewhat porous, now has absorbed some of the glue used to put the signs up. What’s interesting to me was Ann’s dramatic reaction to the simple thought of Tea Party people coming into the capital for a clean-up party. I don’t know how other read that reaction, but it strikes me as if Ann views the Tea Party as being more threatening and destructive than the Liberals who actually stormed the capital and occupied it for quite a number of days. Keep in mind that Ann was not reacting to things the Tea Party was actually doing, but her imagination of what they were likely to do.

"But that's the only difference, the legal one. The legal difference is important, of course, but tells us nothing about whether the act of getting that close to someone who is merely going about their job is an asshole thing to do or not, and it doesn't seem terribly sporting to retreat to the "it's legal" line, when the question raised is the assholishness (or not) of the behavior in question."

The damage to the building and the project of repairing it is an important public issue and Meade was witnessing something that matters to Wisconsin voters. He made a record of it.

Frankly, I question how the work is being done, and I wonder if the maintenance officials are trying to help the cause of the protesters by hastily removing the obvious evidence of damage.

"'Our doors at Wisconsin are open, and we hope you’ll visit us.' Can't get any plainer than that. But if you want to set up an official visit, they would like two weeks' notice, to arrange class visits, a building tour, and chances to talk to law students."

You can't just audit classes at your leisure, but there is a way to sit in on classes. Nevertheless, you'd have to behave properly, and filming the class isn't acceptable behavior, at least not without the teacher's permission. I think it's an intrusion on the students too. They are put on the spot and grilled with difficult questions, and it would really burden them to put that on line.

And some of the material I am using is my copyrighted material. You can't just appropriate it.

Jay Retread said..."Yes Ann, your pussy husband can agressively get in the faces of people whose job it is to clean. They are just janitors afterall. But how dare anybody suggest the same treatment of you in your protected Ivory Tower!"

Meade knows enough about working to know that people in jobs like that tend to enjoy friendly conversation that comes their way. People who don't talk to janitors are probably snobs, like you're aristocracy that treats the "help" as invisible. You showed your colors there, Jay. I think you're inadvertently excusing your own ridiculous snobbery.

Ann Althouse wrote:You can't just audit classes at your leisure, but there is a way to sit in on classes. Nevertheless, you'd have to behave properly, and filming the class isn't acceptable behavior, at least not without the teacher's permission.

Only a snob would use a word like snobbery. "Meade knows enough about working to know that people in jobs like that tend to enjoy friendly conversation that comes their way."

I've had plenty of relatively unfulfilling jobs (let's see: paper route, farmhand, pinsetter, factory machining, machining again, highway worker (non-union mind you), janitor, waiter, bartender, etc.) and I just wanted to do my job. If someone came up close to me like that and started videotaping me, I'd probably wonder: (1) why are you recording me doing this boring job; (2) what is your problem?; (3) don't you have something better to do.

I understand this is a tape recording of all the adhesiveness between all the state workers in the Capitol and the protesters, but the film me left me feeling unglued and sticky at the same time. It just doesn't stick with you after the commission of the egregious tort.

Frankly, I question how the work is being done, and I wonder if the maintenance officials are trying to help the cause of the protesters by hastily removing the obvious evidence of damage.

I got the impression that the building maintenance guys just wanted to get the cleanup done and get their work routine back to normal. This whole thing must have been an enormous pain in the ass for them, with all the chanting, drumming and what not going on in their workplace.

Ann Althouse wrote:Frankly, I question how the work is being done, and I wonder if the maintenance officials are trying to help the cause of the protesters by hastily removing the obvious evidence of damage.

I don't know if they are trying to help the cause of hte protesters by removing damage, so much as cleaning the capitol buildng. What, they should just leave the damage there for days so as to make some political point?THe capitol building and all it's inhabitants simply want to get back to work and have an orderly work environment and public capitol building. Yes it's an imposition to the capitol building to have to clean up the mess, but it's also the natural inclination that if the place is a pigsty that someone goes in there and cleans it up. Whether it serves the purposes of the protesters is immaterial or at the very least secondary.

It's not supposed to be a "boring job". It's the restoration of a National Historic Landmark, a restoration necessitated by the deliberate and purposeful failure of the caretakers and guardians of said landmark to perform their sworn duties. And this "janitorial job" (as people who wish to minimize the egregious damage to the landmark have taken to calling it) is apparently supposed to cost somewhere between 350,000 and millions to complete.

This is the kind of story that the so-called "New Media" is perfectly suited to cover, detailed, topical, local and important to the citizens and tax-payers of the city and state, the kind of story deemed "too boring" by people who obviously don't want the story covered, or people who are too stupid to realize how a small thing could actually be important and forgotten part of a larger story.

But also, Ann had a problem when the tea partiers went to clean up the mess and wanted the pros to do it. (if you want to call the people doing the cleanup up pros). Now that they are doing it, there is still a problem. So, all doors should be open because you can't restric t access in any way , and no one should even wait on line, yet the cops are in league with the protesters in not cracking down on them sufficiently, and the cleaning crew should not rush to clean up the mess because to do so shows they are in league with the protesters?

Well, after watching the video we see that the people cleaning the marble said they were state workers.So if Ann would like she can apologise for attacking the Tea Party. If you've lost Instapundit you know you have gone too far.

The caretakers of a National Historic Landmark should be expected to protect said landmark from defacement and damage, should be punished for their failure to do so and should be expected to initiate a competent restoration of the damage for which they're partially responsible. So they're sending a guy with a razor scraper (razor-blade steel, 5.5 on the Moh hardness scale, is harder than marble, from 2.5 - 5 on the Moh scale, depending on the variety) and a bottle of some sort of fluid to remove the visible tape residue and they're going to bill the State of Wisconsin 350,000 to 7 million dollars for that. Yet, apparently, this is a "boring" and "unimportant" story.

Palladian: "It's not supposed to be a "boring job". It's the restoration of a National Historic Landmark, a restoration necessitated by the deliberate and purposeful failure of the caretakers and guardians of said landmark to perform their sworn duties"

Even jobs that are important can be boring. I suspect if any of the caretakers who had the honor to remove adhesive leftovers on the marble were honest, they'd tell you it was pretty boring work.

Mutaman said..."I'm not talking about a sin. I'm talking about a tort."

Good luck getting any lawyer (even your wife) to take that case.

Calm yourself, Mutaman. I'm not looking for a lawyer.

Ron, "the maintenance director for the downtown building group" suggested to me that he may have committed a "sin" when he grabbed my shoulders with his hands and pushed me away.

I was trying to convey to him that I considered his violation of my personal space as something qualitatively different from a sin. Telling him that I considered his action a tort was not meant as a threat of litigation. It was meant to inform him that his action was not legal.

It was an effective use of law that didn't require lawyers, courts, or litigation. The problem was solved on the spot, in a public space that, interestingly enough, is at the very center of civics, government, and law. It was a perfect example of what it means to "live under the rule of law." An individual who doesn't know and assert his legal rights is vulnerable to being pushed around by government officials in all sorts of ways.

One would have to be unusually cynical to not see the beauty in what took place between me and Ron.

"One would have to be unusually cynical to not see the beauty in what took place between me and Ron."

Your conception of beauty needs some rejiggering. Anyway, you basically threatened him with a lawsuit because he put his hands on you momentarily when you got your gander up because he asked you to back away a bit when you were getting close to doggystyling his worker. It's not like he was going to take you out back or something.

Telling him that I considered his action a tort was not meant as a threat of litigation. It was meant to inform him that his action was not legal.

Oh, please. If you tell someone that they have committed a tort against you, you are threatening litigation. Maybe you didn't mean that as a genuine threat, but anyone on the other end of that comment would reasonably infer that you were putting him on notice that litigation was around the corner if he continued doing what he was doing. And maybe you were justified in doing so. But don't act like dropping legal terminology like "tort" in a situation like this one isn't rattling a saber.

In preparation for the next event involving stickers and tape on the "whose house our house" walls and marble, it might be profitable for someone to come up with an adhesive scraper that replicates the properties of a human fingernail.

Telling him that I considered his action a tort was not meant as a threat of litigation. It was meant to inform him that his action was not legal. "

Sorry but where I come from, accusing someone of commiting a tort on you is certainly "meant as a treat of litigation". Its usually what some punk says when he knows the other guy will kick his ass in a fair fight. Or what a guy says when hes too cheap to hire a lawyer and file a lawsuit. He'll just overwhelm his opponent with his insufferability.

The reason public employees are going to lose their collective bargaining rights is because the Democrats and unions in Wisconsin became fat, corrupt, complacent, lazy, and greedy. Then the Republicans won an election. And elections have consequences.

Seems like the wrong video there. The video on this posting shows a run time of 2:02 and you are talking about 3 and 5 minutes in the video. Not what is there. I was wondering when I didn't see the razor blade or the pushing of Meade and the video ran out before it got to the point where Meade would have mentioned tort.

Althouse: "Meade knows enough about working to know that people in jobs like that tend to enjoy friendly conversation that comes their way. People who don't talk to janitors are probably snobs, like you're aristocracy that treats the "help" as invisible. You showed your colors there, Jay. I think you're inadvertently excusing your own ridiculous snobbery."

You followed two salt truck drivers around, noting their truck ID numbers on cam, hoping they'd get in trouble for honking their horns to protestors. And going on about whether the driver who wasn't salting should get in trouble, or whether the one who WAS salting should get in trouble.

And it's not that Meade didn't have a right to videotape the clean up. It's that he was being a dick, putting his camera up in peoples' grills after they asked him to back off. It's also that he's not very honest. When he was doing all that fake outrage over the memorial inside the building, he presented himself as someone "not unsympathetic" to the cause. He never just tells people who he is, an ultra-right winger taking video to feed to ultra-right blogs. If he doesn't learn to not be so agressive and back off when people aren't comfortable with his camera in their faces, one of these days someone will knock his teeth out.

"Why do leftists care whether or not Meade is employed? As long as he's not on the dole it's none of their business."

I *think* that the employment thing is a stretch for attempting to find hypocrisy or something. Conservatives think people ought to work, therefore the un-nuanced think that the charge of not-working is some sort of automatic point scoring.

It's all about what one person thinks that other people think and then getting it entirely wrong. And of course there is no need to turn around and ask one's self if changing one's moral argument to the opposite of whatever *imagined* value your opponent has reveals too much about one's own moral vacancy.

We think of ad hominem as name-calling, but isn't it rather more this seeming need to discredit the man rather than the argument?

Just take my word on this, members of the public-employee union cheering section: No matter how badly you want to accuse Meade of malingering, the subject of early retirement is one you really, really need to avoid calling people's attention to right now.

You people need to learn how to read. Ann Althouse (who is not union btw) is ripping off the WI taxpayers to the tune of $160,000.00 a year. Meade has join her in the big mooch off the WI taxpayers. If Meade ever grew a pair he would get a job. Larry could be self reliant instead of encouraging Ann's milking scheme.

BTW, I would support Walker going after tenure abuse in our state universities. Paying people like Ann $160,000.00 a year for not even working part time is something we can no longer afford.

Meade asks, "When did they catch on to the idea that they should use blue painter's tape?" Worker: "I'm not sure." Supervisor: "Just don't give him any comments... probably not the press, because he's no credentials, but just another one of the bloggers."

Can't you get Meade some credentials?

Some supervisors are so stupid. They should be explaining what a hard job it is to clean up the mess.

Ann won't answer the question because she is too embarrassed to give the answer. 3/7/11 8:22 AM

Given the "Tenets of classical liberalism", the first two excerpted below, what is your beef?

Key elements of liberalism (1-7)

1. Individual autonomy

The basis of society is the individual. Humans are primarily motivated by self-interest.

2. Individual rights

If the individual is autonomous, then all individuals must be free and equal. This implies political equality, the protection of individual rights, respect for individual choices, and the use of reason in making decisions. "I am free and thus I rule myself." The key individual rights are freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of worship, and the right to property.

And some of the material I am using is my copyrighted material. You can't just appropriate it.

By statute, to claim copyright, the material must be an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. I have a hard time imagining anything that a law professor says would be both1. Original, i.e. something not uttered by any other law teacher to illuminate the understanding of the law -- neither statutes nor caselaw being original to the teacher; or2. Fixed by other than the concerned citizen blogger recording the class. Unless the professor merely read verbatim from his notes, which never happened in any law class I ever had.

Any good law class in America would be an improvisational performance and thus not copyrightable, unless the professor himself took the precaution of recording it.

What's funny is that Ann tried to address the "assholeishness vs. legal" debate presented by another commenter, but then she went on to say that her material is legally copyrighted and she would call security because she can in her response.

So truly, Ann is yet to address the "assholeishness vs. legal" debate. She is saying that because I legally can I will avoid the annoyance of a "journalist" like Meade coming and filming my lecture two inches from my face.

So, despite the assholeishness required to be like Meade, she will take advantage of her legal right to also be an asshole because she doesn't legally have to let an assholeish "journalist" like Meade film her lecture.

With all the smartphones, pocket videocams, laptops, etc. that I assume are floating around a typical lecture hall or classroom, I think it would be wise for Professors (particularly ones known to be entertaining or controversial) to assume that they are being recorded at all times.

By statute, to claim copyright, the material must be an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression.

And once fixed, the author's copyright includes the exclusive right to performances of said material, and to recordings of those performances. If the Professor has notes, writings, or lesson plans that constitute original, copyrighted work, then her reading from those or teaching from those constitutes a performance.

My, oh my! This comment thread makes me wonder if any social scientists have studied blog comment subcultures! I am amazed that anyone takes the time to attack Althouse & Meade or takes the time to defend them against the trolls! Hell, even Ann doesn't dignify the nasties with responses!

What a way to kill my morning. Thanks for nothing! (and I sincerely mean that!)